This document relates to content selection.
The rise of the Internet has enabled access to a wide variety of content items, e.g., video and/or audio files, web pages for particular subjects, news articles, etc. Such access to these content items has likewise enabled opportunities for targeted advertising. For example, content items of particular interest to a user can be identified by a search engine in response to a user query. The query can include one or more search terms, and the search engine can identify and, optionally, rank the content items based on the search terms in the query and present the content items to the user (e.g., according to the rank). This query can also be an indicator of the type of information of interest to the user. By comparing the user query to a list of keywords specified by an advertiser, it is possible to provide targeted advertisements to the user.
Another form of online advertising is advertisement syndication, which allows advertisers to extend their marketing reach by distributing advertisements to additional partners. For example, third party online publishers can place an advertiser's text or image advertisements on web pages that have content related to the advertisement. As the users are likely interested in the particular content on the publisher webpage, they are also likely to be interested in the product or service featured in the advertisement. Accordingly, such targeted advertisement placement can help drive online customers to the advertiser's website.
Advertisers often set budgets for their advertising costs, and the same is true for advertising on the web. Unlike conventional print, television or radio advertising, the web provides variables as to how often an advertisement may be presented. In some online advertising systems, for example, advertisers pay for their advertisements on a per-action basis, e.g., a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. The CPC of an identified advertisement can be multiplied by a performance metric, e.g., a click-through rate (CTR), for the advertisement in an auction process. This multiplied value is thus proportional to the cost of advertisement presentation. Generally, the better the advertisements perform, the better the expected return on investment (ROI) for the advertiser.
However, the predicted performance of an advertisement can be variable between different instances of various placements. For example, if an advertisement is determined to be highly relevant to a first query, the predicted performance of the advertisement in such a placement may be very high. Conversely, if the advertisement is determined to be only marginally relevant to a second query, then the predicted performance of the advertisement in such a placement may be relatively low. Thus, an expected return on investment (ROI) for an advertisement or series of advertisements can depend, in part, on a predicted performance for each given selection process.